TA Archon
Updated and validated to work on v0.82a. Please hand feedback over on discord if anything bothers you. What's "TA Archon"? TA refers to the spell . This is an specific spell that unlocks at e725 mana, and completely changes the way you play Archon, by combining and . Initially, many players even said that Archon wasn't viable before unlocking this spell at ~e360 mysteries (However this has been disproven, see the Early Archon guide!). This guide will be covering how to best take advantage of Archon from the moment you unlock onwards. *Note: Please read the full guide before charging ahead. There are relevant notes throughout to help you understand why certain things are being done, so you can make the best out of your time with Archon. *Note: This guide will repeatedly reference my Early Archon guide, for players finishing that phase and moving to this, however it is also written to be a standalone guide, and you do NOT need to read that first. If this is your first time playing Archon, spare yourself the confusion of reading two guides for an already complex class. What You'll Need If you're coming from the Early Archon guide, you already have everything you need to run Archon effectively. Just look over the BiS and item recommendations below, and upgrade as you see fit. However, if you're just starting Archon now, read on! The most important part of playing Archon is his pet: . The way Soulstealer earns XP is primarily based on Character XP, so much so that character XP multipliers matter more than Pet XP multipliers! And seeing as gains new abilities all the way to level 300, getting his level up will be our first priority. So start by upgrading , , , and . *Note: '' ''should be upgraded first, as it gives the largest bonus, stop upgrading at epic, legendary doesn't boost petexp gain. Also, gives the full XP bonus at the Epic level, so you should wait until later to make them Legendary. gives almost no bonus until Legendary, so you should probably upgrade it last. *Note: Although also grant Character XP, actually grants such a large bonus to Pet XP that they win out. As usual, though, you may want to equip for the increased dust during the early phases when Soulstealer isn't earning much XP anyway Starting Attributes {865 AP} (885 without legendary ) * Intelligence: 150 * Insight: 65 (85 without legendary ) * Spellcraft: 150 * Wisdom: 150 (Will increase to 200 if you have legendary , otherwise increase it accordingly.) * Dominance: 0 * Patience: 50 * Mastery: 175 * Empathy: 125 *Note: Fill can give you too much Insight because it will omit the bonus from if you don't have the attributes to equip it when you click "Fill". Attributes to upgrade later * Intelligence: The 175 INT bonus nearly doubles profits for only 25 attribute points. 200 INT is good if you got a lot of achievements, otherwise, look elsewhere. * Insight: If you have 10 attribute points left over, the 75 INS bonus is worth picking up, but I wouldn't add any more than that. Unless you got enough to get 180 (if you use legendary ) or 140 (if you use with it) The 200 perk is the second-best perk for Archon. This perk should be the third 200 perk you get. After MAS. However, if you can get this in one go, do it. * Spellcraft: The 175 SPC bonus is great because most of our spells are incantations. 200 SPC is the fourth-best 200 perk for Archon. * Wisdom: Wisdom was once useless, and has turned into something really great. Wisdom's 150 perk is the best 150 perk for Archon. It also gives ~2.55% profit every point. And 200 Wis is the best 200 perk for Archon (Low priority to get 200 due to giving 50 WIS during our burst, already putting us at it.). * Dominance: Never upgrade Dominance. There's nothing worth getting here. * Patience: Patience is a great stat with a 3% to Idle bonus. The milestones here are at 100 for , and 150 for a good chunk of profit. * Mastery: Mastery's 200 perk is the third-best 200 perk for Archon, this should be what your first 25 extra goes to. * Empathy: Once you've got the other bonuses, Empathy's 1.8% pet ability power per attribute point equals about 2.3% for and 2.8% for . The goal for later on is to get 200 EMP without using so you can use to level faster. Attributes {Paragon 50 part} Starting Attributes {1165 AP} (1185 without legendary ) * Intelligence: 150 * Insight: 140 (160 without legendary ) * Spellcraft: 250 * Wisdom: 200 (Will increase to 250 if you have legendary , otherwise increase it accordingly.) * Dominance: 0 * Patience: 100 * Mastery: 175 * Empathy: 125 *Note: Fill can give you too much Insight because it will omit the bonus from if you don't have the attributes to equip it when you click "Fill". Attributes to upgrade later {Paragon 50 part} * Intelligence: Keep it there, for now. * Insight: Get 190 ins (210 without legendary ) it gives a lot. * Spellcraft: maxed * Wisdom: It gives ~2.55% profit every point. 225 is a perk nobody wants. Nobody. Don't think about even looking at it. 250 is pretty good, but, already puts us at it. * Dominance: Never upgrade Dominance. There's nothing worth getting here. * Patience: 225 is completely garbo. And 250 is good, but, not worth the points. Dump into this once SPC is at 250. * Mastery: 225 is really good for getting levels. Really great for leveling up Soulstealer, I recommend getting this after getting 250SPC. The 250 of mastery is pretty eh, good for tempo, not so good for archon. Get this absolutely last of the 250s, when we exclude dominance of course. * Empathy: 225 is completely useless on archon. 250 is pretty decent, better than 250MAS, worse than the others, except int250 later on. Tip for attributes past p55 * Intelligence: Get it up to 200 when you get new attributes, not for now. * Insight: Get 190 ins * Spellcraft: Maxed * Wisdom: Don't need more until everything's maxed. * Dominance: ...What did I tell you? * Patience: Pat is a good dump stat once you don't have any new perks to get. * Mastery: Get 225 mas * Empathy: Get 200 emp to use now. Startup Spells Oddly enough, my first piece of advice in the TA Archon guide is to not start with casting ! This is because casting it even once will raise the costs of all your spells while an incantation is casting, making instant casting with impossible. At the start of a new run, our first priority is to stack to build up the missile count, and to boost its persistent effect to benefit all our runs as Archon. While we do this we can accomplish lots of other goals, such as allowing to build up our sources with 1 (*Note: I'll be using x notation to refer to the effects Soulstealer unlocks at x level), and collecting void entities to raise our character level for Soulstealer. To that end, here's my recommended spellset to start this phase: To understand why we use , and to keep casting, and not Archon's other abilities for spell shards, you have to understand a little bit about how Idle Wizard spellcasting works. Spells are cast every 2nd frame (to see your framerate, hit the "|\" key), and from left to right on the spell bar. We use autoclicks rather than relying on , this is due to us getting the needed shards per second from 's 100 ability. We will be using in this guide to level faster, if you feel like you're not casting enough , you're free to use . *Note: Steam has much stabler casting. Therefore I recommend playing on steam while playing Archon. Unfortunately, casting will always be imperfect, because each autoclick only has a 20% chance of granting spell shards. If every autoclick granted shards, Soulstealer alone would max our casting! Even still, it remains the best way of spreading spell shards out over each second. *Note: Due to casting being limited by framerate, optimizing your settings for a higher FPS can actually increase your profitability. I recommend disabling "Shards drop" and "Floating numbers" for a major improvement in performance (and a less cluttered screen). Items Items for this phase are tricky because we have multiple priorities. We're aiming to level high enough to allow us to burst for later, to maximize our character XP, and to cast as quickly as possible. Fortunately, some of those goals are already met for us. should be producing more than 4 void entities per second, even without items, and as we discussed earlier. Most of our items will be used to maximize Soulstealer XP through Character and Pet XP bonuses. For our offhand, we'll be using . This doesn't do much in this phase (no offhand currently does), but in the next phase it'll boost several of Soulstealer's abilities that give us more spell shards (50, 100, and 175). All of that said, here's my recommended itemset for this phase: *Note: For weapons, stacks '' , so as long as you're able to collect bats periodically, this is what you should be using. However, if you're away, will increase Soulstealer's 200, and gather useful enchanting dust. That said, is prohibitively expensive to upgrade for a slight gain, and should be a low priority item to upgrade. This note applies to all item sets except burst, even those from a BiS.'' *Note: Once you get 200 empathy you switch for . *Note: ''If you don't have legendary you might want to use and to maximize leveling of . ''*Note: To collect enchanting dust quickly, you can abuse the Trial of Valor, because if you get the enchanting dust reward, it will count towards '' 200.'' For players below e400, it's worthwhile to try and keep this phase short, so you can burst more frequently. To that end, you may replace with , and with , to force Soulstealer to buy sources +16x faster. Once you reach max sources, you can switch back to and to push Soulstealer's level further. This is actually more efficient than wearing and throughout, but not significantly during longer runs. *Note: If you play with "Floating Numbers" disabled, the easiest way to check if '' is finished buying sources is to look at the Statistics tab. The first statistic listed is "Bought mana sources", and as long as this number is rising on its own, Soulstealer isn't done.'' How Long is this Phase? At e360, this phase should last just enough to unlock , because shorter runs will earn more profit across multiple exiles. Once you've reached max sources, and collected enough void entities, skip ahead to the Void Mana and Burst phases, doing an early burst to earn the e725 mana you need. Then you can go to the TA Stacking phase to maximize your abilities. *Note: It's OK to leave this phase before we're done leveling '' , as we'll be leaving our XP items equipped during the TA Stacking phase.'' TA Stacking In this phase, we'll be stacking with , and reaping the benefits. We'll also stack , , and . This will be the bulk of our run. Spells For this phase, we need to note one quirk of . It only increases the shard costs of spells while an incantation is active. This means that although we'll be putting our accumulated spells on the bar to build fake casts with , we won't be casting them. In this phase, we'll use 2 spells to cast as quickly as possible: , and . In the other 4 slots, we'll be stacking , and our accumulated spells that scale with casts: , , and . Here's our layout: Our accumulated spells all scale with casts by some exponent. Here's how our spells scale (you can see the formula by clicking through to the spell's page): * scales with casts by an exponent of 0.9 * scales with casts by an exponent of 0.81 * scales by an exponent of 0.85, but because it raises passive shard gain, when we burst we have to multiply that by 's scaling by passive shard gain of 1.35, for a total exponent of 1.14. * is far more complicated, having 2 effects, but results in a total exponent of 2.3. *Note: Before we used to use here as well, but, tests have been made and to maximize profits and laziness it is best to stack all four accumulated spells at once. Especially in later-game when can sustain by itself. Items Since our focus is still on casting and leveling Soulstealer, we use the exact same items for this phase as we did in the Startup phase. Optional Late-game {e475 myst+} clicking gear *Note: This gear is used to bolster 's autoclicking amount, this is to increase the level of to increase level. It also helps to get more stable casting. It helps a tiny bit during the shard spend phase. But, it's just a minor efficiency boost, nothing more. Mini-Bursts Now that we've been on this run for a while, we can start leveling Soulstealer further. At this point, Soulstealer has probably maxed out our sources, and we've collected all the void entities for our entire run, so our character is about as high a level as he'll get. Therefore, we want to make sure to get all the upgrades available to us for Pet and Character XP, to level Soulstealer as high as we can. To that end, I recommend jumping ahead, spending some shards, and bursting about a half-hour after starting this phase, and again before any major AFK periods, such as before going to bed. You can actually burst or spend shards at any time with no consequences besides the time spent, since Archon doesn't lose anything by bursting, such as Doppelganger XP from , or spell charges like . So don't be afraid to burst for upgrades, and then return to your current phase. Shard Spending This is a quick phase, to leverage the increased spell costs from to bolster our character ability. Keep in mind you're also spending shards during Pre-Burst and Burst, so don't worry overly much about this phase in shorter runs, especially as you'll be repeatedly bursting. Spells With greatly increasing the costs of our spells, no longer has any noticeable effect. Instead, we'll combine the effects of , , and Soulstealer to buff the autoclicks of and to earn our spell shards, so we can spend it on recklessly casting and : Items Since our focus is still on casting and leveling , we use the exact same items for this phase as we did in the Startup phase. Pre-Burst Since Archon doesn't lose anything while bursting, I recommend keeping this phase shorter than you would with most classes. Once you've burst, you'll get upgrades that will help you earn more void mana, and potentially even increase your max mana enough that can start buying sources again. Therefore, it's better to burst early and return to Pre-Burst to start taking advantage of these bonuses immediately. Spells Like most classes, Archon builds Void Mana best by using . We'll add that to our casting: *note: If you have 200 INS switch for . Items Here's our BiS: *Note: For most players, you'll likely want to just continue stacking here, however, the 5% incantation efficiency enchantment on will give slightly more void mana. If you've upgraded all your other items, this may give more profits. You can get the same enchantment from or . *Note: At the moment, the BiS calculator hasn't been updated to support offhand items, but the best offhand for this phase is , as void mana per entity directly buffs , and you've been stacking the effect with . *Note: You'll likely want to build for the enchant 6 set. *Note: ''Until you get 100 pat you should use . ''*Note: Until enchant 16 (legion) or 200 wisdom perk without items, gives more incantation boost. After your first profitable burst, may be able to purchase a lot of Sources. If this is the case, you can speed this up +16x by temporarily replacing with and with . Once the sources are purchased, burst again and return to Pre-Burst to earn Void Mana properly while buys the sources from the second burst. Burst Spells In this phase, we'll use all the spells we've stacked with during our buildup. Namely, , , and even is included, as it earns incredible profits when used alongside . In addition, we've also been stacking without even realizing it. With all of those spells, our final burst set is: *Note: Even when stacked with , earns significantly less profit than anything in our burst, so it's excluded. Items Here's our BiS: *Note: You should use legendary here or ( beats it on 3+ day-long runs). Ignore the weapon recommendation. *Note: At the moment, the BiS calculator hasn't been updated to support offhand items, but the best offhand for this phase is , as stacks the effect to incredible heights. *Note: You'll likely want to build for the enchant 2 set. You can switch to enchant 8 or 10 much later. How Many Times Should I Burst? If this is a mini-burst, simply repeat the burst until you no longer see major progress, or unlock any new upgrades. However, if this is the final burst of your run, you'll want to burst until stops being able to buy 25 more Arcanasprings. To check this, first, make sure you have the setting "Sources' buying mode" set to "Buy to Fixed", and that your Multibuy is set to x25. Now you can see the number of sources you need to buy, and the cost, underneath the Sources name. It's formatted like: "15X 1.35e784". Now hover over the portrait, and look at the first effect. The "Buying cost mustn't exceed X amount of mana". After each burst, Soulstealer should be able to buy at least those 25 Arcanasprings. Once that becomes impractical, you should be ready to exile! If you still haven't earned enough mysteries, you haven't done enough buildup and should return to the TA buildup phase. Category:Guide